


with words seared against my skin

by repoughts



Category: The Smoke (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-14
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-22 22:14:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3745315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/repoughts/pseuds/repoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He stares at the young man's collarbone, eyes fixed on the curve of the letters and it feels like time has slowed down. The evidence is right in front of him written in his own writing, the black letters standing out against Asbo's white skin, peeking from under the fabric of his shirt. His soulmate, Asbo is his soulmate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	with words seared against my skin

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, so before you start reading this please remember that it's un-edited, if you see any mistakes feel free to point them out to me. This is also my very first fic, kudos for me for having the courage to post it, right?
> 
> Anyway, I hope you like it!

“ _ **Hey! Are you okay? Help's on its way.”**_

 

It can't be happening.

 

Dennis stands braced against the wall, head hung low between his shoulders, while the sound of fire fills the air around him is pierced only by barely audible sobs of a suffering mother. His chest is heaving and he struggles against his clothes, shedding the layers from his skin. Suddenly they feel to small, too hot for him to wear. He needs to get rid of them, or else he won't be able to function, won't be able to catch the air necessary for him to breathe.

 

 ~~_And he can't breath_~~ ~~ _e_ ~~ ~~_._ ~~

 

Every time he thinks he's got it, the air he so desperately reaches out for escapes him leaving his lungs empty and hurting. He's clutching at the bricks, fingers digging into the cold wall, scrapping his nails against the cement. Every time he thinks he will be finally able to enjoy the intake of fresh air it's already gone from his lungs. He can't find the time to inhale, can't find the time to exhale.

It's all a rush of air and his mind can't tell one from another.

 

He feels as if he would never be able to breathe again.

 

Face pressed into hard, cold bricks Dennis, closes his eyes against the harsh light of the lamp post. His eyes are watering but he blames it on the smoke from the fire. He feels angry and sad but the force crushing his shoulders at the moment is called guilt.

 

It seemed like an instinct to grab Gog and run, to flee the scene as if they were never there. He'd done it hundred of times before. Whether it was running away from cops or some shop owner they just stole from it was like a second skin to him. Fight back and run away, with knowledge that you'll still live to see another day.

 

A sob brakes away from his throat and he clenches his teeth shut because he knows that if he'd start crying now the guilt would overwhelm him and that is something he cannot do in front of Gog. He allows himself one second more, a second in which his whole world is falling apart, before he puts on a brave face and stands straight, feet carrying him across the hall where Gog waits for him with a curious look on his face.

 

800 meters to his left and five stories up his soulmate burns with a child in his hands.

 

_**\- - - - - -** _

“ _ **Get off me. Get off me!”**_

 

A boy.

 

His soulmate is the nameless boy from the Churchill Estate, the boy with a dragoon tattoo on his ass, the one he grabbed for in act of desperation hoping that the other would help him, only to be pushed away.

 

His soulmate is the faceless bastard who left him beaten on the floor of a burning flat, holding tight a small baby in his hands, coughing up smoke as the world around him is slowly taken over by flames.

 

Kev tries to reason his actions in his head. _He didn't know who you are. He didn't know that the building would explode. He saw you're a fireman, he thought you could handle it. He was afraid your going to give him over to the police._ He tries, and tries, and tries, spending hours upon hours to understand the thoughts behind the boys actions but no matter how long he thinks about the past he cannot figure it out, and no matter how much he wished he could know what was going through the boys mind he knows he cannot justify his choice(he doesn't want to justify them, needs something to focus on, needs the purpose to get him through the months of laying alone in hospital bed).

 

~~anger, he's so angry, angry at the world, at the bastards who left him burning, angry at his poor excuse of a soulmate, angry at his body for burning so easily, angry at the people who come to his hospital bed~~

 

He doesn't tell anyone about the possibility of one of the boys being his soulmate, he thinks he deserves that. Kev doesn't want people to pity him anymore than they already do, he doesn't want their compassion or advice. The only thing he wants from the world is an opportunity to meet those boys, to look them in the eyes and make them understand what he went through.

 

He needs to find ~~him~~ them.

\- - - - - -

 

How does Dennis tell a man he left to burn that he's Asbo's soulmate? How does he live with himself when he had caused the other half of his soul so much suffering? How could he expect Kev to fall for him, to place his trust in a person which betrayed the very trust in their moment of need?

 

 ~~He doesn't.~~ He doesn't know.

 

He stays close to Kev, makes sure he's always there when Kev needs him. He wants to tell him everything but he's scared. There is too much variables, to many obstacles he has to maneuver around and although it hurts him more and more every day to stay silent, to live in a lie he has created he doesn't say a word.

 

Dennis waits for the right opportunity to tell him.

 

(They're out of town looking at London from distance and Kev speaks with cold fury in his voice about him and Gog, even if he doesn't know it's them. Not yet, he can't tell him yet.)

 

(They're in an abandoned factory and Kev asks what he's got left. Asbo knows that if he'd tell him now there would be nothing left of the man he loves.)

 

(They're in front of his house and Kev assures him that Gog will not find him here, that he's safe. He knows he should tell him now, that this might be the opening he was looking for but he's already scared for his life of one man and he's got nowhere else to go.)

 

In the end the decision is taken out of his hands.

\- - - - - -

 

The first time Kev catches glimpse of Asbo's tattoo he's got the young man hanging over the railing of the staircase, ready to let the him fall.

 

It's a conformation of what he already knew, a conformation of what Dennis had told him just seconds ago, ~~a conformation of his betrayal~~.

 

He stares at the young man's collarbone, eyes fixed on the curve of the letters and it feels like time has slowed down. The evidence is right in front of him written in his own writing, the black letters standing out against Asbo's white skin, peeking from under the fabric of his shirt. His soulmate, Asbo is his soulmate. It shouldn't be such a shock to him, Dennis has already told him about being there during the fire, ~~him and Gog, just him and Gog, no third person, no one left out of the count~~ ~~,~~ but hearing and seeing are two completely different things.

 

He doesn't say anything. The words won't leave his mouth, his hands are sweating around Asbo's clothes but he can't let his grip loosen. It all seem so clear now. The ease he felt around the young man, the way they had quickly taken to one another (almost as if they had meet before, as if they were destined to be together).

 

He was angry just few seconds ago, furious even, ready to throw his friend, his soulmate, from the top of the stairs to satisfy his need for ~~vengeance~~ justice.

 

Asbo begs him to let him go with tears in his eyes, but it's a cry for damnation rather than salvation.

 

He can't do it.

 

His eyes snap up to Asbo's face and he sees something there. He doesn't know what exactly it is (guilt, sorrow, hope), but it breaks him away from his thoughts and he looks at his surroundings, at the watch standing at the foot of the stairs. Only now does he hear Ziggy asking him what is happening.

 

He comes up with a lame excuse, not putting any heart into selling the lie and looks back at Asbo. Fear. That's what he saw in the boy's eyes. Kev hauls him back onto the floor, slumping against the railing, the high of adrenaline leaving his body in a rush and suddenly he doesn't have the strength to support himself, dropping down to sit on the staircase.

 

Dennis runs away from him. ~~Again.~~

 

\- - - - - -

 

The air above their heads is cracking with tension, thick it suffocates them in the broad space of their living room. A fire burns in Kev's eyes stronger and more vicious than any other they fought together against on the job when he asks the question that's been plaguing him for all this time.

 

“Did you know?”

 

~~It could be nothing, it could be everything.~~

 

Kev stares at his lover willing Dennis to look him in the eyes, to have the courage to face the reality of what they are ~~ill-fitting, broken~~ , but the younger man refuses to meet his gaze. The memory of that night, of the choices he made, weights heavily on Asbo's shoulders stifling him and his form visibly becomes smaller, ~~ _smaller, make yourself smaller, take as little space as you can so you don't look threatening, until he's gone, until the smell of paraffin and dog leaves your nostrils._~~

 

“The night of the fire, when you left me, did you know who I was?”

 

A nod. A simple nod is all it takes for the carefully constructed walls in Kev's mind to start crumbling. He was able to go day by day because his world was based on that one single detail, now they're gone and it feels like the earth has been pulled out from under his feet. The anger he felt in that hospital bed nearly two years ago is suddenly back in his mind, ~~in his blood,~~ as if it never left him.

 

The room is too small for the both of them, Kev needs more space, needs more time to think and understand that what he thought was true is just another lie told by a person who supposedly loved him. He's not sure if he wants to know the answer to the next question that appears in his mind but at this time his body seem to have a mind of its own.

 

“Why?”

 

Dennis is speaking, quiet words broken only by his sobs, but Kev doesn't hear any of it. There's a white noise worming its way into his ears drowning out all sounds of the outside world until he's left in the void of his own thoughts.

 

When Dennis looks up from the floor, finally being able to rise his gaze from under the pressure of his guilt, Kev's already at the door. He reaches out his hand in hope of being able to catch the man slipping from his grasp but the only thing that presses against his fingers is air. He drops it when Kev's last words reach his ear and the slamming door echos in his brain.

 

“No, this- this thing between us, it's not going to work”

 

They can't go on like this.

 

\- - - - - -

 

The idea comes to him out of nowhere. This early in the morning, or this late in the night, his brain shouldn't be even thinking properly, but the idea is there and it refuses to leave him alone. At first Kev doesn't think it would work, not for them, not with the way their relationship ~~always was~~ is now,(a tangle of threads knotted tightly together, a mess of strings ready to be snapped) he's ready to throw the idea away if it wasn't for the small voice in his head telling him to wait, to ask what Dennis thinks about it.

 

\- - - - - -

 

Lazy mornings aren't their thing simply because in their line of work it's almost impossible to leave the station. When they do happen, Dennis likes to sleep in, sleep for as long as his body will allow him, until it hurts from staying too long in one position, and his mind refuses to stay quiet. Even then he spends hours under the covers relishing in the warmth and the familiar smell of his lover's pillow (it's coal, the smell of a campfire and earth right after rain).

 

He wonders how he got here.

 

He remembers having so many question about the future, doubting his every word, every step he took, not knowing if the decision he made was the right one. He remembers regretting so many things he'd done, guilt and fear keeping him under their boot, taking away his ability to think clearly.

 

He wonders if he really deserves this happiness. Is he the right person to make Kev happy, despite numerous times they were ready to walk away? Does he deserve the love of the man he had betrayed and left behind?

 

 ~~He does.~~ He doesn't know.

 

He reaches out his hand carefully, not to disturb the sleeping figure beside him, to trace the letters on Kev's side. Dennis never liked his writing, to him it always looked like the writing of a small child but now, looking at the new line of his writing on Kev's ribs, he has to admit it's starting to grow on him.

 

A smile appears on his mouth when his hand is caught in a slightly bigger one, fingers automatically intertwining. It's half past one p.m. on a Thursday but Asbo isn't ready to leave the bed just yet. He hopes Kev will understand that when he buries himself under a pile of covers taking his hand with him.

\- - - - - -

A boy.

 

His soulmate is a boy on his watch, a boy with bright eyes and eager face and he knows it by the way Asbo's first words to him every morning are barely a whisper. He knows it by the way their gazes search for one another in a crowded room, in the confines of the fire engine, in the privacy of their bedroom.

 

His soulmate is a young man, with a pure caring heart, a man who is afraid of dogs but takes surprisingly easily to cats.

 

Both of them have dark pasts, pasts that haunt them in the middle of the night wrenching them away from their sleep, pasts that make them doubt their sanity, but not their feelings for each other ~~never their feelings for each other.~~

 

There will always be an irrational, ~~predictable, understandable~~ fear in Kev's mind of being left alone, times when he wakes up to an empty space in his bed and wonders if today is the day Dennis walks out and never comes back. Then he hears the young man let out a string of swears from the bathroom and he thinks that this thing, them, might actually work out.

 

\- - - - - -

 

It's happening.

 

Dennis joined the White Watch because he believed that this way he'll be able to do some good with his life, to repay for what he and Gog did, to make up for the pain and suffering he brought to the people involved in that night. In a way it's also securing his future. He's not smart or anything, out there in the real world people like him don't have much choice with how they end up. This is his choice.

 

~~He chooses not to believe that the reason he joined the watch was the hope of meeting the man whose writing is on his collarbone~~

 

He never believed in the stories told by people about meeting your soulmate, how it's supposed to be time stopping and littered with bright colors, his and Kev's meeting is the very contradiction of that belief. There are some parts of these stories that hold much of truth, however. The parts about love and adoration, the parts about support from the person that was made just for you, the parts about finding your place in the world.

 

Doubt will always be in his mind, guilt lurking in the dark corners of his thoughts trying to bring him down, a Gog shaped voice telling him he doesn't deserve it, reminding him what a horrible person he is. In moments like those he feels himself sliding down under the surface of regret, clutching at tendrils of his sanity with clumsy hands and all he has to do is find Kev standing across the room, laughing at something Ziggy just said, and he feels like the tide in his mind had moved back if only for that one millimeter.

 

It's happening, they're not perfect, they still got a long distance to cover but they're together.

 

It's enough.

 

\- - - - - -

~~“ _ **Get off me. Get off me!”**_~~

“ _ **Yeah. Yes, Guv.”**_

 

_**\- - - - - -** _

 

~~“ _ **Hey! Are you okay? Help's on its way.”**_~~

“ _ **Welcome to White Watch Dennis, you settling in okay?”**_

 

_**\- - - - - -** _

 


End file.
